


Homing Mechanisms

by SmallBirds



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, DC Universe reference, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Domestic, Fluff, Functional Adult!Derek, Future Fic, M/M, Post College!Stiles, Post-Canon, Romance, baths, pining!Stiles, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6471262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmallBirds/pseuds/SmallBirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnetoreception: The sense which allows an organism to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location. How birds find their way home. </p><p>--</p><p>Stiles returns to Beacon Hills after four years at Stanford, only to find out that Derek has moved back into town. He brings him a housewarming gift. Derek makes food. Things escalate from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homing Mechanisms

**Author's Note:**

> I was daydreaming about Derek Hale taking a bubble bath, and this just kind of happened. I think my kink is him being surrounded by nice things, I dunno. Let me know how you feel!

Barring Mr. Harris, Stiles had always been told by his teachers that he'd be the type of person who'd do well in college. They'd been right, too- he's smart, sarcastic, finally able to channel all that energy into one subject that he can learn  _everything_  about, and just athletic enough to be impossibly attractive to a certain type of person. After the brutal hellscape of his high school years, Stiles kind of figures he deserves the break.

So, he excels in his classes. Makes a few friends, skypes with Lydia and Scott every day, eventually picks a major. Plays the field. He hooks up with people, even dates a few, maybe has his heart broken once or twice. He tries not to think about how there always seems to be something missing.

College is this safe little bubble world where nothing he does has consequences, which on the one hand means that he feels free to do what he wants, but on the other means that he never really gets invested. Besides, there's always something slightly wrong with the men and women he finds himself with. They end up being too short, too fair, too sweet. They laugh too easily.

After graduation he says goodbye to his friends, and he and his dad pack all of the crap he's managed to acquire over the four years he's been at Stanford into the jeep. It's only a three hour drive to Beacon Hills, meaning it's barely after lunchtime by the time they get back. He hugs his dad goodbye before dropping him off at the station, and then heads directly to Scott's without bothering to unpack the car.

Their reunion is heartfelt and filled with some unacknowledged tears and a lot of hugging, eventually devolving into their standard pastime of video games and junk food. He's vegging out on Scott's couch after a particularly cathartic bout of CoD when Scott turns to him all casual with his mouth full of Cheez Puffs and says, "Derek's back in town."

Stiles gapes at his best friend as Scott wipes fake cheese dust all over his pants and completely fails to elaborate. Something inside his chest flutters loose and he thinks Oh.  _Oh, no._

So, he does his morally questionable thing and gets his research hat on, and by the end of the day he has an address.

He panics halfway over there.

It's Derek, after all, and he'd barely tolerated Stiles at the best of times, and  _God, what if Braeden answers the door?_  So, he stops at the grocery store and gets a huge ridiculous aloe plant and a giant carton of Epsom salts, because he has some faint recollection of his mom telling him he should always bring a housewarming gift, and if anybody needs to relax it's Derek Hale. Way sooner than he'd anticipated, he's pulling up in front of a modest row of brick apartments on the right side of town.

Stiles sits in his jeep and hyperventilates for a minute because he's just starting to realize that he doesn't actually have a plan, and  _for Pete's sake those are bay windows_ , and the building is facing west so he bets that Derek gets really lovely light during the golden hour. He stays in the car for far too long, and twice he nearly talks himself into just turning around and going back home, but there it is again- that little fluttering under his collar bone, that emotion he's not willing to put a name to.  _Magnetoreception_ , he thinks despairingly, and stumbles out of the car cradling the plant and the Epsom salts in his arms.

He buzzes random apartment numbers until somebody lets him in, and then it's just a three floor walk up and he's there, standing in front of apartment 301, trying to catch his breath and hoping like hell that nobody's home. The door flies open before he even gets a chance to knock.

Derek stands there in all his beardy, chiseled glory, looking just the slightest bit older and considerably more flabbergasted than he had been the last time Stiles had seen him. They stare at each other in perfect coexistent shock, and Stiles tries to absorb everything about Derek all at once– how the line of his jaw is as sharp as ever, but his eyes seem softer somehow. How there's just the slightest touch of salt in the pepper-black of his beard. How his pants still fit him like they're painted on, the bastard. The fluttering in his chest eases, something that he hadn't even known was askew sliding into place.  _There you are_.

"Happy housewarming," he says, thrusting the plant and the bath salts at Derek, and hoping like hell that the werewolf can't sniff out the underlying emotion in the flood of lust that he's undoubtedly been broadcasting in Derek's presence since he was sixteen.

"How did you even  _find_ – no, never mind." Derek sighs and shakes his head, like he can't believe he'd even bothered to ask. He takes the gifts out of Stiles' hands and puts them carefully down on the little table just inside the front door, next to a small ceramic bowl that has keys in it.  _He has a key bowl_ , Stiles realizes, and for some reason that makes him want to burst into tears.

"Uh, welcome home," he chokes, and then immediately thinks,  _That was a fucking stupid thing to say, he left this place behind him for a reason_ , but Derek is reaching out and grabbing a fistful of Stiles' jacket. For one heart-stopping second Stiles thinks he's going to get punched, but then he's being yanked forward into a hug that crushes the air from his lungs, strong arms winding around his torso. Derek exhales softly and drops his head onto Stiles' shoulder.

"You're an idiot," Derek says gruffly, the soft prickle of his beard on the bare skin above Stiles' collar sending a completely inappropriate shiver up Stiles' spine. "I can't believe you got me an aloe plant."

"It was the biggest thing they had that didn't have flowers," Stiles says, his voice muffled by the soft cotton of Derek's shirt. He wraps his arms tentatively around Derek's back, returning the hug with feeling. Derek smells the same– old leather, fresh earth, like growing things. He doesn't say  _flowers die and you've had enough death_. He doesn't say  _aloe has healing properties_. He doesn't even say  _it's a metaphor_ , he just clutches at Derek's shirt and tries to itemize every detail of the hug into his memory, because he's pretty sure it's a one time deal and he'll be damned if he doesn't cherish the shit out of it.

Slowly and by degrees, Derek lets him go, stepping back into the apartment, but bringing Stiles with him, keeping him close.

"Nice place," Stiles says, whistling low under his breath as Derek turns to shut the front door. It is nice, too, an open floor living room and kitchen deal with exposed brick and a staircase that hints at a second floor. There's a big leather couch and a bookcase along the near wall. A French press sits on the kitchen island. Stiles tries not to whimper at the mental image of Derek sitting down to a home cooked breakfast, perhaps with his hair sleep-tousled, his pajama pants slipping down to reveal just a sliver of toned hip...

"When did you get back?" He yelps, skidding away from his imagination and planting a proverbial Here Be Dragons sign in that section of his brain.

"Just a few weeks ago," Derek says, gathering up the gifts and walking them over to the kitchen island. He snorts as he reads the label of the Epsom salts, but doesn't level a glare at him so Stiles counts it as a win. "I hadn't realized you were back from Stanford yet, I would have come around."

"Oh, I just got back a few hours ago," Stiles says matter-of-factly, shrugging off his jacket and turning to hang it on one of the hooks next to the door.  _Coat hooks, coat hooks, he has coat hooks_ , his brain chants over and over, and Stiles wonders when he found the time to develop this ridiculous domestic competency kink. He misses the startled look on Derek's face.

"What, did they send out an APB saying I was back in town?"

Stiles snorts. "No, dumbass. I stopped by Scott's and he told me you'd called him."

Derek stares. "So, what, Scott told you I was here and you just tracked down my address and came over?"

"Yep," Stiles says, only half listening now that he's walked over to nose around Derek's bookcase.

"Stiles."

"Hm?" He glances back over his shoulder. Derek's face does something complicated that Stiles doesn't know how to translate. He stares wistfully at Derek's eyebrows, thinking,  _I'm out of practice_ , and quirks one of his own in question. Derek just sighs and shakes his head, an odd little smile playing around the corners of his perfect mouth.

"Nothing. I just– missed you," Derek says, like it's being forced out of him. Stiles nearly chokes on his own spit.

He turns back to the books, hunching his shoulders up to his ears and trying not to explode with lust and vulnerability and the other thing that he's not thinking about yet. "I missed you too, asshole," he says, staring at Derek's collection of John le Carré novels without actually seeing them. "You'll have to fill me in sometime on where you went after you left."

"Are you doing anything now?" Derek asks, and he sounds hesitant and kind of guilty, and Stiles whirls to face him again because that hadn't been his intention, but before he can get any words out Derek says, "I could make some more coffee?" His eyebrows are doing something hopeful, like he honestly thinks that Stiles could even consider walking out. Stiles sighs, and slouches over to sprawl into one of the chairs around the island.

"I would love some coffee."

So they talk. And it's– honestly, it's not what Stiles was expecting. Derek tells him about all the places he'd traveled to with Braedan, how their relationship had naturally developed into a deep friendship once they'd both realized how unprepared they were for any type of romantic entanglement, how she'd eventually gotten him to go to therapy. "I still talk to her every day," Derek admits. "I think she's in Catalonia, trying to track down some holy relic."

Stiles tries not to seethe with jealousy, and tells Derek about college, about his one professor who fell asleep in weird places in between his lectures, about his Criminal Science degree, his terrible freshman year roommate, the friends he'd made over his time there. "No girlfriends?" Derek asks, picking up his mug and staring at it studiously.

"A few," Stiles says with a shrug, "and some boyfriends. Nobody stuck."  _Nobody was you_ , he thinks, contemplating the inside of his own mug.

Later that night, after Stiles gets a text from his dad asking him to pick up dinner, Stiles gets his things together and hovers awkwardly by the door.

"Uh, it was good catching up, dude," he says, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. Derek watches him fumble, looking placid and relaxed and completely unreachable. Stiles goes to give him a companionable pat on the shoulder, but Derek ducks under his arm and suddenly they're hugging again, and Stiles thinks that this time Derek is inhaling him, like Stiles' scent is something he wants to remember. Stiles feels his heart dissolve into a sweet and gooey puddle in his rib cage.

"You should come over for dinner some time," he says, his voice thick. He splays his hands across Derek's back, reveling in the play of muscle under his fingers.

"Okay," Derek says. "Your dad won't mind?"

"My dad would be thrilled," Stiles says, pulling away to grin at him. "He pretty much fell head over heels for you once he realized you were one of the only things keeping my ass alive." Derek ducks his head and Stiles is delighted to see that he's blushing.

"You're blushing!" He crows, because he has  _literally_  no filter, and to be honest, he's been repressing a lot the last few hours. He deserves this.

"Go home," Derek growls, shoving him out the door. His cheeks are decidedly pink.

It becomes a thing. Stiles gets a job as a lab assistant for the BPD, working grueling 10 hour days and loving every grime and research-filled minute of it. Every evening after he clocks out, he swings by Derek's apartment. Sometimes he stays for hours, sometimes only for a few minutes, "to check on the plant." Derek looks cautiously suspicious the first few times it happens, but it doesn't take long for him to conveniently be taking a casserole out of the oven (or a huge pot roast, or lasagna, or meatloaf– Derek is apparently the world's foremost expert in oven based cooking) just as Stiles hits his landing.

They hang out. On the weekends, Derek comes to the Stilinski house for dinner. Sometimes they go to the movies. Sometimes, Scott and the rest of the pack meet them at the diner on Fifth and they scarf down burgers and milkshakes and talk about things that don't revolve around their painful shared history or supernatural disasters. In fact, Beacon Hills is quieter than Stiles can ever remember it being. It makes him nervous, but also determined to enjoy the peace and quiet while he can.

Six months after that first night, Stiles drives over to Derek's with his entire cinematic collection of Batman movies. He'd been shocked when Derek had told him that Batman was his least favorite DC character, rolling his eyes and biting back a grin when Stiles squawked in outrage.

"He never actually had to work for the stuff he had, he was filthy rich even before his parents died. And it's not like he gave a shit about the poor citizens of Gotham when they were alive."

" _He was eight years old_ ," Stiles had hissed furiously, feeling perhaps slightly overprotective of The Dark Knight. It's not his fault that he'd always kind of thought of Derek as a lycanthropic Bruce Wayne– the parallels begged to be drawn.

Derek had shrugged, grinning down at his Szechuan pork like he knew how much this was getting to him. Stiles threw a potsticker at his face, and Derek caught it in his mouth easily. The bastard.

"I always liked Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern, lady-fridging aside," Derek had admitted, chewing thoughtfully as he inspected a piece of pork, and it was so right, so  _Derek_ , that Stiles had sat back in his chair with a thump, tirade forestalled.

"Of course you do," he'd sighed, scrubbing his hand across his face. "Willpower over fear." When he looked back up, Derek was watching him oddly. "What?"

"You know I'm not actually a superhero, right?" Derek had said, and then burst out laughing when Stiles scoffed and threw another potsticker at him.

It's nice that Derek laughs around him, Stiles thinks absently as he parallel parks in front of Derek's building. He was always a little reserved around the Sheriff and Scott, as if he felt like being around him was a chore for them. But he laughs at Stiles' dumb jokes and shares his food with him and always answers the phone when Stiles calls in the middle of the night after a nightmare. He's the best person Stiles knows.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Stiles stares unseeingly out of the windshield. The world continues to revolve, completely unaffected by the bomb that had just gone off in the driver's seat.  _Oh, god_ , he thinks, letting his head thunk down on the steering wheel.  _I'm in love with him._

What a disaster.

He forces himself to get out of the car, because Derek undoubtedly heard the jeep coming from a quarter of a mile away and will be wondering what the holdup is. He cradles the DVDs to his chest as he jogs across the street and up the front stairs of the apartment building, head ducked down against the light rain and heart throbbing in his chest.

Derek is pulling short ribs out of the oven when Stiles opens the apartment door, using the keys Derek had given him months ago ("You're here all the time, Stiles, stop being weird about it and take the fucking keys"). He's wearing heather grey sweatpants and a soft-looking knit sweater, and he smiles like it doesn't cost him anything when Stiles shimmies out of his wet jacket with an overly exaggerated shiver.

 _This is terrible_ , Stiles thinks, that old flutter in his chest seizing at the sight of the thumb holes in Derek's sweater. "Smells good," he adds out loud, because running out of the room screaming is not an appropriate reaction after finally admitting to yourself that you're in love with one of your closest friends. He kicks off his sneakers and makes his way over to the kitchen, brandishing the DVDs. "Are you ready to completely reevaluate your world view?"

Derek snorts, slides a couple of plates onto the kitchen island. "Can we eat first, Oh Enlightened One?"

"I guess," Stiles sniffs, stealing a carrot from the salad bowl and crunching on it obnoxiously, grinning at Derek's wince. "I'll go wash my hands. Don't start without me."

"Use the bathroom upstairs," Derek says, pouring balsamic over the greens. "The sink in the one down here is leaking."

Stiles tears his eyes away from Derek's forearms and tromps up the stairs to the second floor of the duplex, enjoying the feel of the hardwood under his socks. He hasn't spent a lot of time up here, other than the initial tour Derek had given him after his first visit. A large master bedroom occupies most of the space at the far end of the hall, with a master bathroom and a smaller office closer to the stairs.

Stiles washes his hands quickly, drying them on the hand towel hanging on a hook near the bathroom door. It still gives him a little thrill to look around and see all of these clues that mean Derek has made a home here, that he plans on staying. He pokes around for a minute, curiosity getting the better of him. He snorts when he sees the carton of Epsom salts in the cabinet under the sink, picks it up with the half-formed idea of bringing it downstairs to remind Derek about it, but instead stops and stares at the carton in shock.

It's half empty.

Derek finds him there five minutes later, still staring at the salts like he's never seen anything more fascinating. "Stiles? Everything okay?" He asks, leaning on the doorframe and raising an eyebrow.

Stiles turns to face him, shoving the carton of Epsom salts in his direction. " _You used them_ ," he says urgently. Derek's other eyebrow joins the first. "I got you Epsom salts and you  _used them_."

"Well," Derek shifts uncomfortably, the tips of his ears flushing. "I mean, you got them for me. It was a housewarming present."

"I know," Stiles moans, feeling a little hysterical.  _Derek takes baths_. Derek Hale- scowling, grumpy Derek Hale with his jaw cut from marble and his shitty jokes and tender heart, takes baths and uses the Epsom salts that Stiles had bought him as a joke.  _I'm going to hell_. He stares at the carton woefully.

"Stiles, what am I missing, here?" Derek says, mostly joking but with a touch of concern.

"I want to take a bath with you," Stiles sighs, shaking his head at the salts, and then the words actually register with him and he drops the carton to slam both hands over his mouth. "Oh my god," he hisses, feeling the deep red flush of embarrassment and panic roll across his cheeks and down his chest. Derek looks completely blank, his face a frozen mask, and Stiles thinks,  _Oh my god, oh my god, I'm gonna die_. "I-I'm sorry," he whispers, and the panic is real now, because Derek is one of his best friends, and he's gone and fucked it up like he always knew he would.

"Sorry," he gasps again, fumbling for the fallen carton and setting it on the sink with trembling hands. "I didn't mean to say that out loud." He doesn't say  _I didn't mean it_. Derek would hear the lie in his heartbeat and it would only serve to humiliate him further. "Look, I'm just gonna–"

"Okay."

Stiles freezes. Blinks. Rewinds the last few seconds in his head. "Wait, what?"

Derek steps towards him, lifts his right hand and touches the soft pads of his fingers to Stiles' throat. His pointer finger brushes against Stiles' pulse point, making his heart hammer in response. "I said okay."

He takes another step. Stiles' brain bluescreens for a second when he sees how dark Derek's eyes are. "How is that okay?" He asks dumbly, his eyes falling to Derek's mouth. Derek is smiling, a little ruefully.

"Stiles," he says with exasperation, as if Stiles is the one being obtuse. "If you think there's a single thing in the world that I wouldn't do for you, you're an idiot."

Stiles gapes. The fluttering is his chest is nearly unbearable. "Magnetoreception," he murmurs, and then he lunges forward, grabbing fistfuls of that ridiculously soft sweater and hauling Derek to him, but Derek is already moving, and Stiles has a second to register the thin blue ring of color around the darkness of Derek's dilated pupils before their lips meet and they're kissing, wrapped up in each other in front of God and a carton of Epsom salts.

\--

  
"I want you to know," Stiles pants into Derek's mouth some time later, undulating his hips to rock their dicks together and displacing a lot of the bathwater in the process, "that I'm completely fucking gone on you. You're it, dude."

Derek actually whimpers and his cock pulses in Stiles' hands. " _Yeah_ ," he gasps, letting his head fall so he can mouth at the junction of Stiles' shoulder and throat. "I'm in love with you, so. That's good."

Stiles comes with a choked shout.

\--

  
A few weeks later, Derek renovates the upstairs bathroom. They decide on a tub big enough for two.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these idiots so much. I hope you guys enjoyed it! Come visit me at Sterekationstation on tumblr dot com. <3


End file.
